- A 4,000 sq ft space in Austin (S. Congress & Ben White) has been offered for a new open-source fablab; the owner previously invested ~$30 k in an Austin TechShop project but abandoned it after concluding the TechShop business model is non-viable.  
- The group is debating how to fund the space: rejecting the “health-club” monthly-fee model, they favor a hybrid of (1) small consulting contracts ($20 k each from 4–5 engineers) and (2) NSF-style education/outreach grants already used by other FabLabs.  
- Inventory and consumables management is flagged as a critical, unsolved problem—how to let members freely take washers, wire, etc. without either petty cash transactions or cumbersome sign-out sheets; ideas include automated “convenience machines” and containerized storage.  
- The space layout under discussion: a large communal fabrication floor (housing a donated Mechmate CNC and other big gear) plus 5–10 rentable 10×6 “work cells” to offset rent and utilities.  
- David Treadwell, a local materials-science consultant and Gingery-style DIY-machine advocate, is championing the project; he is open to open-source hardware packaging and selling kits for those who don’t want to bootstrap tools from scratch.  
- Dan Heeks’ open-source CAD/CAM work (libarea, HeeksCNC) is highlighted as a key resource for the lab’s tool chain; Open CASCADE license was confirmed to be genuinely free software.  
- Community debate on the RobotGroup list (James Choate et al.) questions whether “fabbing” should be central or merely a side feature; concerns raised about pay-for-classes models versus open access.  
- Wiggio.com is spreading virally among Austin bio/robot circles as a Web-2.0 project-management tool, prompting criticism about proprietary lock-in and data ownership.  
- TED 2009 memes discussed: Juan Enríquez’s “Homo evolutis” concept and Bill Gates’ mosquito stunt, both dismissed as hype rather than substance.